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> That analogy is hard for me to follow. Again, for the most part, no laws are being broken. The analogy was more to demonstrate that harsher regulation ain't

> That analogy is hard for me to follow. Again, for the most part, no laws are being broken. The analogy was more to demonstrate that harsher regulation ain't always the only solution. And with something as abstract as "taxation" I think it's usually a rather bad approach because new regulations will only result in new loopholes being created, it's an endless cat&mouse game wasting a lot of resources for everybody involved. That's why I mentioned that "moral debt". Across the whole world there exists lots of behavior that's technically not "illegal", but still frowned upon by large parts of societies, tax evasion rates among them. Imho if you want people to follow the "rules of society", and not use every chance they get to circumvent financial legislation (which is what a lot of tax evasion effectively boils down to), then you first need to convince them that paying taxes isn't just a burden to them but also of use to them. > I can deduct the property taxes and mortgage interest for my house from my Federal income tax. If that's an easy and obvious process, open and evident to everybody who'd it be relevant to, then that's a-okay. Sadly that often ain't the case which is in large parts the result of the above-mentioned cat&mouse game. I realize that my whole point might come across naive in a kinda "if people were just good we wouldn't need laws" way, but that's not at all my intention. I just think there's a real cultural rift here in terms of how seriously some people take their responsibilities towards the society they are living in, historically that's never been something you could fix through "legislation".

tyingq 9y ago
Ahh, that helps me understand better. Hard to be completely clear in a global context though. Nike, for example, has a company in a tax haven that owns the intellectual IP for "the swoosh". It receives payments from other Nike companies for the "right to use". That loophole has to exist, as any company, in any country, could be an IP holder.
- freeflight 9y ago
  > That loophole has to exist, as any company, in any country, could be an IP holder. Exactly, that's why it's probably more useful to appeal to conscience then trying to enforce compliance through regulation. In the case of multinational corporations that might be a lost cause, but these corporations are also just made up of real people, so there's still a very slim chance. The other alternative would be a straightforward global taxation system, eliminating a lot of the "multinational" loopholes. But that sounds awfully a lot like a "World Government" and people who don't like paying taxes usually ain't exactly keen on NWO sounding ideas either.

tyingq 9y ago

Ahh, that helps me understand better. Hard to be completely clear in a global context though. Nike, for example, has a company in a tax haven that owns the intellectual IP for "the swoosh". It receives payments from other Nike companies for the "right to use". That loophole has to exist, as any company, in any country, could be an IP holder.

freeflight 9y ago
> That loophole has to exist, as any company, in any country, could be an IP holder. Exactly, that's why it's probably more useful to appeal to conscience then trying to enforce compliance through regulation. In the case of multinational corporations that might be a lost cause, but these corporations are also just made up of real people, so there's still a very slim chance. The other alternative would be a straightforward global taxation system, eliminating a lot of the "multinational" loopholes. But that sounds awfully a lot like a "World Government" and people who don't like paying taxes usually ain't exactly keen on NWO sounding ideas either.